It is argued that the philosophical and epistemological beliefs about the nature of mathematics have a significant influence on the way mathematics is taught at school. In this paper, the philosophy of mathematics of the NCTM's Standards is investigated by examining is explicit assumptions regarding the teaching and learning of school mathematics. The main conceptual tool used for this purpose is the model of two dichotomous philosophies of mathematics-absolutist versus- fallibilist and their relation to mathematics pedagogy. The main (...) conclusion is that a fallibilist view of mathematics is assumed in the Standards and that most of its pedagogical assumptions and approaches are based on this philosophy. (shrink)

While there are satisfactory answers to the question “How should we teach children mathematics?”, there are no satisfactory answers to the question “What mathematics should we teach children?”. This paper provides an answer to the last question for preschool children (early childhood), although the answer is also applicable to older children. This answer, together with an appropriate methodology on how to teach mathematics, gives a clear conception of the place of mathematics in the children’s world and our role in helping (...) children develop their mathematical abilities. Briefly, children’s mathematics consists of the world of children’s internal activities that they eventually purposefully organize in order to understand and control the outside world and organize their overall activities in it. We need to support a child in mathematical activities that she does spontaneously and in which she shows interest, and we need to teach her mathematics that she is interested in developing through these activities. In doing so, we must be fully aware that the child’s mathematics is part of the child’s world of internal activities and is not outside of it. We help the child develop mathematical abilities by developing them in the context of her world and not outside of it. From the point of view of this conception, the standards established today are limiting and too focused on numbers and geometric figures: these topics are too prominent and elaborated, and other mathematical contents are subordinated to them. Adhering to the standards, we drastically limit the mathematics of the child’s world, hamper the correct mathematical development of a child, and we can turn her away from mathematics. (shrink)

The claims of randomized controlled trials to be the gold standard rest on the fact that the ideal RCT is a deductive method: if the assumptions of the test are met, a positive result implies the appropriate causal conclusion. This is a feature that RCTs share with a variety of other methods, which thus have equal claim to being a gold standard. This article describes some of these other deductive methods and also some useful non-deductive methods, including the hypothetico-deductive method. (...) It argues that with all deductive methods, the benefit that the conclusions follow deductively in the ideal case comes with a great cost: narrowness of scope. This is an instance of the familiar trade-off between internal and external validity. RCTs have high internal validity but the formal methodology puts severe constraints on the assumptions a target population must meet to justify exporting a conclusion from the test population to the target. The article reviews one such set of assumptions to show the kind of knowledge required. The overall conclusion is that to draw causal inferences about a target population, which method is best depends case-by-case on what background knowledge we have or can come to obtain. There is no gold standard. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against the thesis defended by Michael Giudice, who claims that it is possible to provide a concept of law by determining the necessary conditions of its essence. My main thesis is: 1) that this goal can exclusively be reached with certain kind of concepts: those satisfying what I propose to call:“Golden Standard of Concepts with Necessary Conditions” and 2) that the concept of “Law” is not such a concept. Therefore I defendmethodological pluralism in opposition to (...) methodological monism embraced by some contemporary legal philosophers.Resumen:En este artículo contiendo la tesis defendida por Michael Giudice en la cual sostiene que es posible elaborar un concepto de derecho mediante la determinación de las propiedades necesarias de su esencia. Mis tesis principales son: 1) que sólo para cierto tipo de conceptos puede alcanzarse ese objetivo y 2) que el concepto de “Derecho” no es uno de ellos. Defiendo un pluralismo metodológico contra el monismo metodológico suscrito por algunos filósofos del derecho contemporáneos. (shrink)

This chapter describes non‐standard philosophy, derived from non‐philosophy, and shows how this discipline and its use can be relevant to the discussion of innovation. The challenge of rebuilding innovation involves developing new processes and new ways of thinking. Multiple challenges, but also opportunities, arise when it comes to (re)thinking innovation with a non‐standard innovation attempt. The first concerns thinking innovation, without which the proposal is neither willing nor able to take root. Non‐standard innovation must be a quasi‐scientific discipline. Because it (...) is not a question of drawing up a new thought that is incapable of proving its interest or reduced to a proposal that does not have practical application. Non‐standard innovation cannot be entrusted solely to the field of organization management. It can only be understood as a form of overcoming, a radicalization or an accomplishment of innovation. (shrink)

The problem at the heart of “Stemming the Standard-of-Care Sprawl: Clinician Self-Interest and the Case of Electronic Fetal Monitoring,” an article by Kayte Spector-Bagdady and colleagues in the November-December 2017 issue of the Hastings Center Report, is the persistence of a suboptimal standard of care long after evidence-driven approaches would dictate a change. That problem is not simply defensive medicine, or what the authors call “standard-of-care sprawl.” Instead, it is that, in some cases, the standard of care lags behind best (...) practices. It gets stuck. The authors point to the genesis of the stickiness problem in their passing reference to a core truth: “The problem is that standard of care is not synonymous with best or evidence-based medicine.” In my view, we might best understand the persistence of ineffective and even harmful medical interventions by acknowledging the regulatory vacuum in which such practices thrive. It is by default, not by design, that the profession relies on medical malpractice law to set the boundaries on acceptable practice. (shrink)

Bottom lines and codes provide a corporation with guidelines for dealing with the inside and outside world. Bottom lines have the oldest papers through Frederic Taylor's Scientific Management, dated beginning 20th century. Codes came into existence in its midst with the emerging sustainability agenda, referring both to technical detail and human judgement. Corporate codes present themselves as a policy document with collective rules handed down by way of a top-down approach. Since an effective code is dependent on the motivation of (...) individual employees, this article proposes the additional view of a bottom-up approach. By sharing values in concrete work employees become co-owners of the code. Top-down and bottom-up approaches thus emerge in a complementary relationship. A relevant organisational context would be a parallel structure of action and reflection, thus facilitating balanced thinking in the sustainability domain and contributing to an 'ethical calibre' or 'moral standard' of a corporation. (shrink)

Adaptationist explanations for well-known phenomena are of limited value to psychological science. To be truly useful, evolutionary psychological research programs must produce novel discoveries about contemporary cognitive and behavioral processes. The concept of special design is especially useful. Even if special design cannot be convincingly demonstrated, rigorous attempts to meet this evidentiary standard can produce novel scientific contributions.

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom dominating the social sciences and philosophy regarding temporal discounting, the practice of discounting the value of future utility when making decisions. Although there are sharp disagreements about temporal discounting, a kind of standard model has arisen, one that begins with a normative standard about how we should make intertemporal comparisons of utility. This standard demands that in so far as one is rational one discounts utilities at future times with an exponential discount function. Tracing (...) the justification for this standard through economics, philosophy and psychology, I’ll make what I believe is the best case one can for it, showing how a non-arbitrariness assumption and a dominance argument together imply that discounting ought to be exponential. Ultimately, however, I don’t find the case compelling. Non-exponential temporal discounting is often rational. If this is correct, Instead of trying to ‘fix’ non-exponential discounting because it is irrational and associated with negative life outcomes, we might instead focus attention on why the conditions obtain that make such discounting rational. (shrink)

Savulescu and colleagues have provided interesting insights into how the UK public view the ‘best interests’ of children like Charlie Gard. But is best interests the right standard for evaluating these types of cases? In the USA, both clinical decisions and legal judgments tend to follow the ‘harm principle’, which holds that parental choices for their children should prevail unless their decisions subject the child to avoidable harm. The case of Charlie Gard, and others like it, show how the USA (...) and the UK have strikingly different approaches for making decisions about the treatment of severely disabled children. (shrink)

There has been increasing awareness of the medical and moral challenges in the care of unrepresented patients: those who cannot make their own medical decisions, do not have any surrogate decision maker, and have not indicated their treatment preferences. Most discussions have focused on procedural questions such as who should make decisions for these patients. An issue that has not gotten enough attention is the ethical standard that should govern medical decision making. I explore the question of which ethical standard (...) provides better justification for end-of-life decisions for unrepresented patients. Two options are considered: the conventional and less demanding best interest standard, and the novel and more demanding medical futility standard. I explain the similarities and differences between these two standards, examine arguments for and against each one, and suggest that the medical futility standard is ethically superior and should replace the established best interest standard. (shrink)

During the past decennium, one of the main issues discussed in research ethics has been focused on the care that should be provided to the control group in a clinical trial. This discussion is also called the standard of care debate . Current international research ethics guidelines contain a wide variety of standards for the standard of care—including the provision of the highest attainable, the best available, the best current, a proven , and an established effective treatment. In this (...) article, we systematically review the currently used standards and argue that none of the current standards is adequate to serve as a universal standard for the standard of care. Alex London has made a substantial proposal for a universal standard, but universally adopting his standard is problematic. In this article, we propose a revised version of London's standard. (shrink)

For more than a half-century, evidence scholars have been exploring whether the criminal standard of proof can be grounded in decision theory. Such grounding would require the emergence of a social consensus about the utilities to be assigned to the four outcomes at trial. Significant disagreement remains, even among legal scholars, about the relative desirability of those outcomes and even about the formalisms for manipulating their respective utilities. We attempt to diagnose the principal reasons for this dissensus and to suggest (...) ways in which a broadly shared evaluation might be forged, both with respect to the appropriate equations for defining the standard of proof and with respect to the appropriate utilities to associate with the various trial outcomes. Where consensus cannot be forged, we hold that remaining differences can probably be finessed. We also suggest ways to elicit the utilities of individuals on these matters so as to avoid the usual flaws of such surveys. Along the way, we note a). the disproportionate role that the Blackstone ratio of errors continues to play in appraisals of the utilities of trial outcomes (despite its unintelligibility in the context of utilities) and b). the persisting belief -for which there is no theoretical basis-that every plausible assignment of utilities will inevitably result in a very high standard of proof. Finally, we examine some of the technical features associated with a proposed rank ordering of the utilities of trial outcomes. (shrink)

I have two concerns about Pugh et al ’s case that vaccine requirements without a natural immunity exception are unjustified.1 First, the scientific question they suggest must be answered to justify the policy is in my view the wrong one, or at least not the only relevant one. Second, the authors set up a standard for public health regulation that will be often unattainable, risking paralysis of public health authorities. Pugh et al suggest two legitimate bases for vaccine mandates: ‘the (...) prevention of severe outcomes from COVID-19 and the reduction of viral transmission.’ Governments and employers have a legitimate interest in protecting the health of their citizens and workers, respectively. To maximally accomplish these goals, the relevant scientific question for whether people with prior infection should be subject to a vaccine mandate is: in persons who have been previously infected, does vaccination enhances protection against severe disease and/or infection and transmission? The relevant comparison, if one is trying to maximise protection in the population, is not vaccination vs prior infection, but vs prior infection alone. I am unaware of a systematic review of this question, but the answer in two recent studies appears to be that the combination is more protective.2,3 The comparison the authors propose, in contrast, seems to be one based on an unstated conception of fairness and adequacy: if vaccination alone provides some level of protection, and prior infection can’t be shown to provide an inferior level, then prior infection should be an acceptable alternative to vaccination to satisfy mandates. No argument is given to support the greater relevance of the comparison the authors emphasise. A second and independent concern is that the authors’ proposal …. (shrink)

The ethical frameworks of consequentialism and formalism predict moral awareness and behavior in individuals, but current measures either do not treat these frameworks as independent or lack sufficient theoretical underpinnings and statistical dependability. This paper presents the development and validation of a new scale to measure consequentialism and formalism that is well grounded in prior research. The Ethical Standards of Judgement Questionnaire is validated via six studies. Measurement items are developed in the first three studies, which also confirm the (...) need to eliminate a unidimensional measure and evaluate these frameworks separately. The fourth study addresses discriminant validity and the two remaining studies provide insight into how consequentialism and formalism predict the degree to which behaviors are deemed acceptable by individuals in the context of consumer beliefs and religious beliefs. Suggested uses for the scale in both academia and organizations are presented. (shrink)

At least five sets of ethical standards influence business people's decisions: general cultural, company, personal, situational, and industry standards. Each has an official or espoused form encoded in written documents such as policy statements and codes of ethics and an unofficial form that develops as people use the espoused standards. (We call these unofficial standards values in action.) To determine whether the high-technology industry deserves its reputation for moral laxness, a pilot questionnaire was designed. It asked (...) employees to rate the acceptability in the workplace of ethical behaviors relating to safety, third parties, and cheating the company. The findings show that employees in high-and low-technology industries uphold espoused values of safety. Relations with third parties are influenced by the existence of company codes of ethics, especially in small companies. Actions involving cheating the company need to be investigated further. (shrink)

It has been almost 20 years since the field of bioethics was galvanized by a controversial series of multinational AZT trials employing placebo controls on pregnant HIV-positive women in the developing world even though a standard of care existed in the sponsor countries. The trove of ethical investigations that followed was thoughtful and challenging, yet an important and problematic methodological assumption was left unexplored. In this article, I revisit the famous “double standard of care” case study in order to offer (...) novel consideration of the placebo orthodoxy that underlies much of the ethical debate. This majority view found in medical research is that placebo-controlled trials are methodologically superior to comparative trials that use active controls. I challenge this orthodoxy and argue that lives were unnecessarily lost in these trials as a result. Furthermore, current HIV research on vaccines and microbicides is now poised to repeat the error of subscribing to the placebo orthodoxy. (shrink)

The rule against bias is a central tenet of English law and it also impacts on collegiate courts which typically exercise appellate/review jurisdictions over their professional or student members. This is true of the Bar Standards Board which has established the adjudicatory bodies to enforce its regulatory framework and has vested the procedure of fair trials upon the Council of the Inns of Court which is responsible for appointing the Disciplinary Tribunal panels that conduct hearings for professional misconduct. The (...) COIC has been exposed for ‘irregularities’ in the findings of guilt against barristers who have been adjudged by non-qualified judges. In R v Visitors to the Inns of Court and Ors [2014] EWCA Civ 1630, the Court of Appeal ruled that a disciplinary tribunal or a panel of visitors appointed from barristers or lay representatives outside its pool of enrolled judges would still ensure independence and guarantee freedom from outside pressure. The impugned tribunal members who were not entitled to sit nevertheless had authority to act as de facto judges. This part of the ruling reinforces the regulatory bodies inherent power to appoint its own tribunal to adjudicate and it needs a more rigorous application of natural justice principle on the part of the BSB. (shrink)

In complex, pluralistic societies, different views concerning the moral duties of healthcare professionals inevitably exist: according to some accounts, doctors can and should cooperate in performing abortion or physician-assisted suicide, while according to others they should always defend human life and protect their patients’ health. It is argued that the very plurality of responses presently given to questions such as these provides a liberal argument in favour of conscientious objection, as an attempt to deal with moral diversity by protecting both (...) the professionals’ claim to moral integrity and the patients’ claim to receive lawful and safe medical treatments. A moderate view on CO is defended, according to which none of these claims can be credited with unconditional value. Claims to CO by healthcare professionals can be justified but must be subjected to a reasonableness standard. Both the incompatibility of CO with the medical profession and its unconditional sanctioning by conscience absolutism are therefore rejected. The paper contributes to the definition of the conditions of such reasonableness, particularly by stressing the role played by conceptions of good medicine in discriminating claims to CO; it is argued that respecting these conditions prevents from having the negative consequences dreaded by critics. The objection according to which accepting the physician’s duty to inform and refer is inconsistent with the professed value of moral integrity is also discussed. (shrink)

Krueger & Funder (K&F) focus on an important problem, but they offer a political rather than a scientific remedy. “Balance” is not our problem; systematic, scientific research is. Only that sort of research will ever lead social psychology out of its current malaise that focuses on positive and negative aspects of human behavior.

This essay traces the history of premenstrual syndrome in French, British, and American medical literature from 1950 to 2004. Aetiological theories, treatments and diagnostic criteria have varied over time and place, reflecting local conditions and changing notions of objectivity and evidence. During the 1970s researchers in each nation utilised different research strategies to overcome variation and contradictory results characteristic of PMS research. Since the 1980s, attempts have been made to standardise research internationally through prospective daily rating questionnaires that diagnose and (...) measure PMS. Amidst controversy, a psychiatric reformulation of the syndrome was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . While the diagnostic criteria for this psychiatric category, now called premenstrual dysphoric disorder , are widely accepted for research purposes, efforts to transfer them to medical practice have been less successful. PMDD remains a contested disease construct. (shrink)

While there are companies whose codes of ethics state that mere appearance of unethical behavior by employees is morally unacceptable, this so‐called appearance standard has hardly received any attention in the business ethics literature. Using corporate integrity theory, this article explores the criteria that may explain how mere appearances of unethical behavior can arise (i.e., the presence of conflicts of interests, the entanglement of these interests, a reputation for lack of integrity, and deviant outcomes) and those that may make such (...) appearances morally unacceptable (i.e., foreseeability, avoidability, and seriousness). The article proposes remedies for preventing and resolving instances when mere appearance of unethical behavior is morally unacceptable. (shrink)

An astonishing volume and diversity of evidence is available for many hypotheses in the biomedical and social sciences. Some of this evidence—usually from randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—is amalgamated by meta-analysis. Despite the ongoing debate regarding whether or not RCTs are the ‘gold-standard’ of evidence, it is usually meta-analysis which is considered the best source of evidence: meta-analysis is thought by many to be the platinum standard of evidence. However, I argue that meta-analysis falls far short of that standard. Different meta-analyses (...) of the same evidence can reach contradictory conclusions. Meta-analysis fails to provide objective grounds for intersubjective assessments of hypotheses because numerous decisions must be made when performing a meta-analysis which allow wide latitude for subjective idiosyncrasies to influence its outcome. I end by suggesting that an older tradition of evidence in medicine—the plurality of reasoning strategies appealed to by the epidemiologist Sir Bradford Hill—is a superior strategy for assessing a large volume and diversity of evidence. (shrink)

The relation of normic support offers a novel solution to the proof paradox: a paradox in evidence law arising from legal cases involving merely statistical evidence (Smith 2018). Central to the normic support solution has been the thesis that merely statistical evidence cannot confer normic support. However, it has been observed that there are exceptions to this: there exist cases where merely statistical evidence can give rise to normic support (Blome-Tillmann 2020). If correct, this fact seems to undermine the normic (...) support solution to the proof paradox. This paper explores a resolution: normic support can resolve the proof paradox even though merely statistical evidence sometimes gives rise to normic support. The key to understanding this resolution lies with a source of evidential support that arises out of bodies of evidence that involve *character evidence* (Colyvan, et al. 2001). It turns out that character evidence can provide normic support when it is grounded in our knowledge of a certain kind of disposition individuals can have: *goal-directed dispositions*. The upshot is the recovery of the normic support solution to the puzzle of whether statistical evidence can meet legal standards of proof. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that one of the standards that governs practical reasoning is the stability standard. The stability standard, I argue, is a norm that is constitutive of practical reasoning: insofar as we do not take violations of this norm to be relevant considerations, we do not count as engaged in reasoning at all. Furthermore, I argue that it is a standard we can explicitly employ in order to deliberate about our ends or desires themselves. Importantly, this (...) standard will not require that some ends are prescribed or determined by reason alone. (edited). (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the relationship between lawsuits for medical malpractice and the legal standard of care. I suggest that there is an insidious, dynamic relationship between physicians' reactions to the recent increase in malpractice litigation and an artificial elevation of the legal standard of care. Since, that is, the legal standard for proper medical care is based upon the community standard of care rather than the reasonable person standard, to the extent that overtreatment or “defensive” medicine becomes widespread (...) as a reaction to malpractice litigation, the legal standard becomes elevated as well. Thus, it will increasingly be the case that unless a physician practices defensive medicine, and hence practices unreasonably, she risks being found liable for medical malpractice. (shrink)

Während der größte Teil der Bevölkerung die kieferorthopädische Therapie, also die Veränderung der Zahn- bzw. Kieferstellung, als eine Behandlung betrachtet, die vor allem auf eine Verbesserung des Erscheinungsbildes zielt, sehen der kieferorthopädische und zahnärztliche Berufsstand sowie auch private und öffentliche Kostenträger in bestimmten Abweichungen von Zahn- oder Kieferstellungen eine Gefährdung der oralen Gesundheit und der Funktionsfähigkeit des Gebisses. Letztere Auffassung bestimmt das ärztliche Handeln in der Kieferorthopädie und begründet auch die Übernahme zumindest bestimmter Leistungen durch die gesetzlichen Krankenkassen. Anhand aktueller (...) wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse lassen sich jedoch in vielen Fällen keine (akuten oder potentiellen) gesundheitlichen oder essentiellen funktionellen Beeinträchtigungen und Risiken abweichender Zahnstellungen nachweisen. Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, diesem Widerspruch nachzugehen. Im Folgenden werden wir aufzeigen, welche Faktoren die Anbieter kieferorthopädischer Leistungen beeinflussen, welches die entscheidenden Gründe und Grundlagen für die Behandlung sind und an welchen Kriterien sich die Leistungsübernahme durch die Krankenkassen orientiert. Dabei wird deutlich werden, dass die formalen Kriterien von Behandlung und Kostenübernahme, die tatsächliche Behandlungs- und Kostenerstattungspraxis, die Erwartungen derjenigen, die Behandlungsleistungen in Anspruch nehmen und der aktuelle Stand der Forschung zu erwartbaren Funktionsbeeinträchtigungen durch Zahnstellungsvariationen nicht zwanglos zu vereinbaren sind. Erforderlich erscheint ein interdisziplinärer normativer Diskurs über die Frage, wie die diagnostizierten Spannungen aufzulösen wären. Als Anregung für einen solchen Diskurs werden wir im Ausblick alternative Lösungsstrategien vorstellen. (shrink)

Rather than being inherently evil, business lobbying is a socially responsible activity which needs to be restrained by ethical standards. To be effective in a business environment, traditional ethical standards need to be translated into language which business persons can speak comfortably. Economical explanations must also be available to explain why ethical standards are appropriate in business. Eight such standards and their validating arguments are proposed with examples showing their use. Internal dialogues regarding the ethics of (...) lobbying objectives and tactics will plausibly occur only in businesses which recognize social responsibility mandates. Public interest stakeholders could hasten this recognition by making use of information made available by the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 to institute external dialogues regarding lobbying by specific businesses and industry groups. Given practical ethical standards and the information on business lobbying provided by the law, the press, corporate activists, consumers, pension fund managers and the public can apply pressure for ethical lobbying practices. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1920 Edition.